Gotcha Day II: It's Official

Good morning, Sophie!



We found out last night that Sophie is not a bath person. She does not like them, Sam I Am - not one little bit. But, after the fastest bath I've ever seen (even the cats complain less), we threw away her old clothes and put on her brand new PJs.

Sophie kinda woke up a few times during the night, but went back to sleep a few minutes later. Not too bad for sleeping with new people in a strange place. In fact, she slept longer than I did!

We got up at 6 AM, and went down to breakfast about 7:30 AM after getting ready. Sophie helped Stacy get her hair ready...



Sophie had a bottle before we went down to the buffet, but we wanted to give her something more substantial to eat too (she normally has hot rice cereal, we are told). We found out that she loves pancakes, rice, and noodles (of course). We tried some fruit - bananas are okay, as are apples, but she didn't go for oranges at all.

The chinese family that sat down at the next table came over to look at her (we stick out just a little bit here, and we tend to gather observers wherever we go.)

She's a pretty clean eater, which is good, because she hates the disposable bibs we brought with.

After breakfast, we bundled her up in her new coat and hat, and left for a very busy morning of more paperwork.



On the way, we had to stop at the bank so I could exchange a very large amount of US dollars into a very large amount of chinese yuan. In this province, some of the fees are paid in US dollars (the orphanage donation), and the rest are paid in local currency. It would have been nice to know this a few days ago.

The bank we went to didn't see US dollars very often, so it was a 15 minute ordeal of waiting and watching them check and recheck the bills, and then have everyone in the bank scrutinize my passport and visa.

I should mention that it was about this time that we realized that we didn't have Stacy's passport with - we didn't know where it was - and it wasn't where I thought I'd put it. You might think that we would be freaking out about that, seeing as how we'd be stuck in Harbin until we could get a new one sent to us. You would be right (at least, inwardly).

Our guide, Lynn, called the hotel, and they sent a team of people up to our room, and they called back saying that they'd found it! This was great, because it was going to be a worry point until we got back to the hotel in the afternoon.

We then went back to the adoption center, had our family picture taken for the registration form, and then went back to the conference room from yesterday to fill out more paperwork and answer more questions.

The way that it works, at least in this province, is that we have her for a trial day, then the next day everything is finalized. I suppose, technically, we or the directors could say no after the trial day, but that was not going to happen today :)

It was clear to everyone that Sophie was already bonding to us (she didn't want anyone else to pick her up, for example - even the people who she was with the day before), and that she was very happy with us.

We signed and thumbprinted some more forms, answered some more questions about our plans for her education and health treatment, and why we wanted a special needs child, and then Sophie got to put her hand print on a document (I assume it was her saying she wanted us to adopt her).

Very large amounts of money disappeared from our posession, we gave the orphanage director gifts, and then we got to take some more pictures of us holding very official documents...



The first is us with the Orphanage director, and his assistant, and I believe his release of Sophie to us.



This is us with Susan, the director of adoptions in the province, with the official adoption registration. My eyes in this pic are looking at the other camera taking pictures - sorry!

What does all this mean? At approximately 11AM local time, Sophie became our daughter officially!

We said good bye (Sophie waved) and we got back onto the van to go to the Carrefour (everyone calls it Walmart - it's the generic chinese name for a department store / supermarket) and bought some formula, water, pop, noodles, a stuffed puppy (for her second birthday - she was born in the year of the dog), and some chocolate for Stacy and I.

This store also has a mall attached to it, which included a KFC! Yay, we wanted to have a little western food!

It is nothing like the KFC in the US. Sure, they have "chicken" but it is, how do you say, "wrong"? We got the popcorn chicken and fries - the fries were good (pretty hard to mess up) but the popcorn chicken was made out of the meat that the McDonalds Chicken Nuggets used to be made out of before they switched to all white meat. Dark, gristly, and with just the wrong texture and flavor. Not going back to KFC in China.

We left after Lynn got back from her lunch, and Sophie fell propmtly to sleep on the ride back to the hotel.



When we brought all of our groceries up to the room, Sophie woke back up and we gave her a bottle before putting her back to sleep for a nap. And that is where things sit right now - Stacy and Sophie are sleeping, and I am blogging.

I'll be working on putting video up tonight - we found the cables, now I just need time

Tomorrow will be an unplanned day, and Thursday we are going to the Harbin aquarium - it's supposed to be really neat, especially for kids.

We leave for Guangzhou on Friday afternoon. Which reminds me - please pray that the local govenrment gets Sophie's passport ready by Friday - apparently it usually takes longer than the time we are staying, so our agency is expiditing the processing - but prayer will bring it to fruition.

Thank you everyone for posting comments - please continue to do so - it's very touching and wonderful to read them every day. We feel your love and prayers through them!

More to come soon!

Larry